Santa Sees Me

The 1954 Santa Parade and Me

It wasn’t the coldest day of 1954 but it sure seemed that way.

It was for sure the happiest.

It was the day the seven-year-old me put on my pajamas under my clothes, zipped up my car coat, wrapped yards and yards of scarf around my neck, tugged on my toboggan, slipped on my mittens and boarded the downtown bus with my mother.

We were headed for the most important event in any grade school kid’s entire life, the Santa Parade.

The Santa Parade was later then, the day after Thanksgiving, and at this time of year one week can make a difference in the weather.

My father worked at Penney’s in the early fifties so he was already downtown. And so was the family car, thus the bus trip.

The Parade was our first glimpse of Santa for the season. Sears didn’t mail its Christmas catalogs until after Thanksgiving. The Christmas season began the day after Thanksgiving then - no earlier - and was commemorated in the Times-News with a daily countdown. On Santa Parade Day in 1954 it was 24 shopping days till Christmas. Sunday didn’t count. You couldn’t shop on Sunday. No stores were open.

The parade was later in the day then, too. The afternoon Times of Friday Nov. 26, 1954 informed readers that the parade would begin at 5:30. It also reported snow flurries that morning with temperatures expected to plunge into the thirties by parade time. And thus the outfit that made me look like Randy in “A Christmas Story.”

Mother and I debarked the green and white bus at the corner of East Center and Broad and headed inside Penney’s to await the parade.

My father, who was shoe department manager then, waved to us as we threaded our way through Men’s Wear and Work Clothes. He waved because he knew we wouldn’t make it to Shoes without stopping at the Candy Counter. My mother had a notorious sweet tooth and darned if I didn’t inherit it. She went straight to orange slices, her favorite of many favorites. I circled the counter, peering at bon-bons, considering malted milk balls, feeling the warmth from the nuts, drooling over every single sugar treat, even though I knew before I left home what I wanted: chocolate-covered raisins.

I was sitting in a chair in the shoe department, watching my father measure women’s feet - he charmed every one of them, even the ones with big clunky feet - when I heard the clarion call. Two blocks away and I could hear it. It was the Dobyns-Bennett marching band heading down Broad, drum major ramrod stiff at the front, followed by the boy and girl Indian and a row of gorgeous majorettes stretched from sidewalk to sidewalk. Mother and I raced to the Center Street door. So did everyone else in the store.

The sidewalk watch began. I waved at majorettes and elves and clowns and policemen until my lips were blue and my ears were red.

And then he came into view. High atop a fire truck sat the man who looked just like his picture. “I see you,” Santa said to me and nobody else. His helpers were tossing candy by the double-handfuls into the crowd and kids were surging toward the truck, screaming and howling, trying to get Santa’s attention. But he was looking straight at me. I know it was me he was looking at. As he did, he motioned that a piece of candy was heading my way. I was stuffed full of chocolate covered raisins but I was ready to run across broken glass to get that piece of Santa candy. The butterscotch tumbled in slow motion as it headed toward me. Why didn’t I bring my ball glove? I asked myself. As I cupped my hands, a large mom and a gangly teen elbowed me backwards. They both touched the cellophaned candy at the same time, popping it upward, still in slow motion. She reached for it, then he did, it bobbled and bounced in midair, then tumbled to the sidewalk. Now they had lost interest and were jockeying for another piece of candy.

Not me, that was my candy. I went down. I wiggled through legs and boots. I could hear my mother calling. But the candy was in sight. A pair of brogans almost backed over it. Then a pair of high heels zeroed in. But I was too quick. I had it and I was back by my mother’s side before Santa could climb down and head into W.B. Greene’s Toyland, where a thousand little kids already awaited, readying their big pitches for what they wanted for Christmas.

I turned the butterscotch over and over in my hand. It was a beautiful caramel color with streaks of dark brown marbled in.

As the sun slowly set over the top of J. Fred Johnson’s, I devoured the sweetest piece of candy I have ever eaten.

“Do you want to go tell Santa what you want,” my mother asked. She knew I had been working on my soliloquy all week, why I deserved a pony. But suddenly, with my tongue still tingling from butterscotch meltdown, it didn’t seem so important.

I could write Santa a letter.

“Nah,” I told her. “I got what I wanted.”